JP2000181041A - Transport roller, photosensitive material transport device and photographic processing equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a transport roller which hardly loosens or hardly produces excessively tension in transported photosensitive material, to make speed in a carrying path leading to a downstream side from an upstream side constant, to reduce the number of part items and to obtain a transport roller whose production cost is low by providing many projections arrayed in one direction on an outer peripheral surface. SOLUTION: An outside roller 11 is provided with many projections 17 made of soft material and arrayed in one direction on its outer peripheral surface. Then, respective rollers coated with pile-like resin 18 are arranged to be juxtaposed, so that the projections 17 is alternately turned reverse in a photographic paper carrying direction. When the transport rollers whose directions are different are arranged alternately, slight pushing pressure from photographic paper acts on the projections 17 caused by tensile force from a downstream side to the photographic paper, whereby the force for carrying the photographic paper along the direction of the projections 17 acts on the carried photographic paper. Thus, slack in the photographic paper is absorbed in the middle of transporting by the movement of the photographic paper along the projections whose directions are different.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a transport roller, a photosensitive material transport apparatus and a photographic processing apparatus. The present invention relates to an apparatus and a photographic processing apparatus.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A photographic processing apparatus, for example, an automatic development processing apparatus is constituted by arranging a developing processing tank, a bleaching processing tank, a fixing processing tank, a washing tank and the like in parallel. A rack that can be inserted and withdrawn as a whole is installed, and has a function to process photosensitive materials such as long films and photographic paper while being continuously transported into each tank through this rack. ing. In the transport process, the photosensitive material is usually partially sandwiched between a pair of rollers, and is fed from an upstream side to a downstream side while being guided by a guide mechanism such as a guide roller. Since the photosensitive material is long, if the transport speed is not balanced before and after, the photosensitive material may be loosened, tension may be generated, or the photosensitive material may meander. Material may be damaged.

Therefore, in order to prevent such troubles from occurring, it is conceivable to increase the transport speed on the downstream side by strongly pulling the leading end of the photosensitive material or increasing the diameter of the roller pair on the downstream side. Methods such as applying tension are being implemented. However, in this method, since the photosensitive material on the rear end located upstream is held between the low-speed rollers,
On the contrary, the photosensitive material may be damaged by excessive tension.

As a method for solving this problem, a one-way clutch is employed, and when the photosensitive material is pulled at a speed higher than the rotation speed of a pair of rollers,
A method of idling one or both of the rollers has been proposed (for example, JP-A-7-43878).

[0005]

However, the use of a one-way clutch increases the number of parts of the entire apparatus, and further increases the roller diameter on the downstream side, so that it is necessary to prepare many types of rollers. Rising production costs were inevitable. Moreover, the structure becomes complicated due to the adoption of the one-way clutch mechanism,
There was room for improvement in equipment durability or maintenance work.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, to make it difficult for the photosensitive material to be conveyed to be slackened or excessive tension, and to prevent the photosensitive material from being transported from the upstream side to the downstream side. It is possible to keep the speed constant, so that there is no need to increase the roller diameter toward the downstream side, and further, it is possible to reduce the number of parts by eliminating the need to employ a one-way clutch mechanism, and to reduce the number of parts and reduce the production cost. And a photographic processing device.

[0007]

The above object is achieved by the invention described in each claim. That is, the characteristic configuration of the transport roller according to the present invention is that the outer peripheral surface has a large number of protrusions arranged in one direction. According to this configuration, when a plurality of transport rollers are juxtaposed to form a transport path so that the directions of the projections of the transport rollers are opposite to each other, the photosensitive material is transported while being slightly pressed toward the projections. As a result, a conveying force acts on the photosensitive material in a direction along the direction of the protrusion, and even if a situation occurs in which the loosening occurs during the conveying, the loosening is effectively absorbed. Even when transported, meandering and loosening are less likely to occur.
Therefore, it is not necessary to increase the roller diameter toward the downstream side,
There is no need to use a one-way clutch mechanism. As described above, since the photosensitive material can be transported at a constant speed, no excessive tension is applied to the photosensitive material. As a result, according to the present invention, it was possible to provide a transporting roller which can be used in a photosensitive material transporting apparatus and a photographic processing apparatus which has a small number of parts and is inexpensive to manufacture. Here, one direction means not only that the direction of each of the plurality of protrusions is one direction, but also that a large number of protrusions are arranged so as to have directionality as a whole. This includes the case where the whole is spirally arranged on the outer peripheral surface of the roller.

It is preferable that the projection is made of a soft cloth material having chemical resistance, and the cloth material is coated on a roller base. In this case, the photosensitive material is durable even when immersed in various kinds of alkali or acidic processing liquids, so that maintenance costs can be reduced, maintenance work is easy, and the projections are soft. When is transported, the action of pressing on the projection occurs, and the transport force along the direction of the projection acts more strongly on the photosensitive material, and reliably absorbs the slack that may occur on the long photosensitive material. It is convenient because it can be eliminated. Moreover, since the projections are formed on the cloth-like material and are formed by covering the roller base, attachment and detachment are facilitated, which is more convenient.

Further, the characteristic constitution of the photosensitive material conveying apparatus according to the present invention is that the conveying roller of claim 1 or 2 conveys the photosensitive material such that the projections formed on the conveying roller are arranged in opposite directions. A plurality of these conveyance rollers are arranged side by side in the direction, and these conveyance rollers constitute a pair of nipping conveyance rollers for conveying the photosensitive material with a roller having no projection, and constitute a guide roller for guiding the photosensitive material. It is in.

According to this structure, the photosensitive material is conveyed while being slightly pressed toward the projection, so that a conveying force acts on the photosensitive material in a direction along the direction of the projection, and the photosensitive material is loosened during the conveyance. Even if the image is generated, the slack is absorbed, and even if the photosensitive material is conveyed at a constant speed, meandering and slack hardly occur. Therefore, it is not necessary to increase the roller diameter toward the downstream side, and it is not necessary to employ a one-way clutch mechanism. As described above, since the photosensitive material can be transported at a constant speed, no excessive tension is applied to the photosensitive material. As a result, according to the present invention, the number of parts is small,
It was possible to provide an inexpensive photosensitive material transport device with a low manufacturing cost.

The photosensitive material conveying apparatus according to the present invention is formed on a rack which can be suspended in a photographic processing tank and can be inserted into the photographic processing tank. Preferably, a roller is provided. In this case, since the transport mechanism is formed in a removable rack, operations such as replacement of the processing liquid and cleaning of the tank are facilitated and convenient.

Further, a characteristic configuration of the photographic processing apparatus according to the present invention is that the photographic processing apparatus has a developing tank, a fixing tank, and a washing tank provided with the photosensitive material conveying apparatus according to claim 3 or 4. According to this configuration, when the long photosensitive material is conveyed by pulling, it is difficult for the photosensitive material to meander or loosen, so that the photosensitive material can be conveyed at a constant speed, and excessive tension acts on the photosensitive material during conveyance. However, there was no need to use rollers of various diameters, and it was not necessary to employ a one-way clutch mechanism, so that the number of parts could be reduced, and a photographic processing apparatus with a low manufacturing cost could be provided. The photographic processing apparatus may be provided with a bleaching tank, a drying line, and the like.

[0013]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a schematic overall structure of an automatic developing apparatus which is an example of a photographic processing apparatus according to the present embodiment. From the left (upstream) side in FIG. 1, baked photographic paper 1 which is a kind of photosensitive material is sent to each processing tank for development. That is, the photographic paper 1 first
It is immersed in the color developing tank 2 and then in the second color developing tank 3 to be color-developed into each color, subsequently immersed in the bleaching tank 4, and further sent to the fixing tank 5 to be immersed and fixed on the photographic paper. You. Finally, it is sent to a drying device (not shown) through the three-stage washing tanks 6, 7, and 8, and is dried. The development and drying process is completed. During this time, in each tank, the photographic paper 1 is taken in while being held between the pair of rolls, and the processing liquid is appropriately sprayed onto the photographic paper 1 using a nozzle (not shown) arranged in the processing tank. The photographic paper 1 is sent out to the processing tank of the next process while promoting the processing.

As described above, the automatic developing apparatus is configured by arranging processing tanks filled with various processing solutions in parallel according to the processing order. The transport of the long photosensitive material inside the processing tank is performed by a rack that is exclusively supported by a large number of roller pairs and guide rollers, is suspended and supported above the processing tank, and can be inserted into and removed from the processing tank. Therefore, the transport path mainly centers on the transport path in the rack except for the insertion port and the exit. When a transport roller is used, a roller forming a roller pair or a guide roller corresponds to the rack, and a rack forms one of the photosensitive material transport devices. In FIG. 1, the rack plate, the suspension support structure, and the like constituting the rack are not shown in order to avoid complication, and only the transport portion is shown.

Hereinafter, the conveyance path of the photographic paper 1 will be described.
First, the photographic paper 1 is supplied from two pairs of nipping rollers 10 and 10 provided in the insertion port 9 to the first color developing tank 2 and then to the second color developing tank 2.
It is fed to and immersed in the color developing tank 3. The operation of the roller group forming the transport path in each of the color developing tanks 2 and 3 will be described for the first color developing tank 2 as a representative.

The photographic paper 1 is fed downward from the pair of nipping rollers 10 into the first color developing tank 2 and is immersed therein, while being nipped by the first nipping roller pairs 11 and 12 while the first guide rollers 13 and The sheet is sent to the second pair of nipping rollers 15 and 16 via the second guide roller 14.

Outer rollers 11 of the first pair of nipping rollers 11, 12 are formed of a large number of soft material projections arranged in one direction on the outer peripheral surface as shown in an enlarged view in FIG. 17
It has. The other central roller 12 is a large diameter roller made of a chemically resistant resin having no protrusion 17 on the outer peripheral surface. The large-diameter roller 12 has a function as a power transmission member that is rotationally driven via a gear, a belt, or the like by a driving device (a motor or the like) not shown, and the small-diameter roller 11 is freely rotatable. Has become.

The small-diameter roller 11 is a cylindrical cloth-like product made of a pile-like resin 18 having a high chemical resistance and having a number of flexible projections 17 arranged in one direction and raised. To the resin tube 1 forming the base of the roller 11.
9 is formed. Bosses 21 for inserting and fixing the shaft 20 are fitted to both ends of the resin pipe 19, and spacers 22 for pressing and fixing the pile-shaped resin 18 to both ends of the resin pipe 19 are press-fitted and fitted. ing.
Then, the spacer 22 and the shaft 20 are fixed using screws 23 or the like. That is, the pile-shaped resin 18 is
After the resin tube 9 is covered, the resin tube 19 is pressed and fixed to the boss 21 by spacers 22 at both ends.

Further, FIG.
As shown in FIG. 2B, a pile-shaped resin 18 having a projection 17 forms a base of the first guide roller 13.
9. However, in the case of the first guide roller 13, a large number of protrusions 17 formed on the surface thereof are raised in a direction opposite to the direction of the protrusions 17 of the small-diameter roller 11 constituting the above-described first nipping roller pair. It is arranged. The pile-shaped resin 18 is also provided on the surface of the second guide roller 14 disposed following the first guide roller 13.
, But in this case, the first guide roller 13
Of the projection 1 in the direction opposite to the direction of the projection 17 formed on the surface of
7 is formed. That is, the direction of the protrusion 17 on the surface of the second guide roller 14 is the same as the direction of the protrusion 17 of the small-diameter roller 11.

As described above, the rollers covered with the pile-shaped resin 18 are juxtaposed and arranged such that the projections are alternately reversed in the direction in which the printing paper 1 is conveyed. If the transport rollers having different directions are alternately arranged, these protrusions 1 may be generated due to the pulling force on the photographic paper 1 from the downstream side.
7, a slight pressing pressure from the photographic paper 1 acts,
A force conveyed along the direction of the projections 17 acts on the photographic paper 1 to be conveyed, and the slack of the photographic paper 1 is absorbed during the conveyance by the movement of the photographic paper 1 along the projections having different directions. As a result, even if the long printing paper 1 is conveyed at a constant speed, the meandering or loosening of the printing paper 1 is effectively suppressed. Therefore, according to the present embodiment, in order to ensure a proper and balanced photographic paper conveyance state, there is no need to arrange a roller having a larger diameter toward the downstream side, nor to employ a one-way clutch mechanism. Thus, a simple structure with a small number of parts as a whole is obtained, and a configuration with a low manufacturing cost is obtained.

In the above case, since a large number of projections 17 are formed of a pile-shaped resin 18 and have flexibility, when the pressing pressure from the printing paper 1 acts on the projections 17 In addition, the action force following the direction of the projection 17 becomes stronger, and the slack is more reliably absorbed, which is preferable.

The downstream roller group has the same configuration. That is, the third guide roller 24, the fourth
The protrusions 17 on the surface of the guide roller 25 are formed in opposite directions to each other.
The projections 17 on the surfaces 6 and 27 are also formed so as to be arranged in the opposite directions to each other. As a result, the photographic paper 1 alternately slightly presses the transporting roller group having the projections formed on the surface in the opposite direction. The paper is fed while contacting these projections 17.

Hereinafter, the transport rollers located on the outer side (the side of the wall surface of the processing tank) are arranged so that projections of opposite directions are alternately arranged. Since the photographic processing apparatus of the present embodiment has such a configuration, even if a long photosensitive material is fed at a constant speed during the process of immersing and processing each processing tank, , And a balanced transport form is maintained. In FIG. 1, among the transport rollers arranged in each tank, the transport roller of the type shown in FIG.
Further, the transport roller of the type shown in FIG. In FIG. 1, symbols A and B are attached only to the transport roller group in the first color developing tank 2, but each transport roller is similarly arranged in each of the other tanks. However, any order of A and B may be provided first.

[Another Embodiment] (1) As another embodiment of the transport roller, FIG.
It may have a structure as shown in FIGS. That is, this transport roller has a large number of projections 17 spirally formed on the surface thereof along the circumference of the roller, and the transport roller shown in FIG. 3A and the transport roller shown in FIG. Have the spiral directions opposite to each other. By arranging the combination of these transport rollers side by side on the transport path, the same operation and effect as in the above-described embodiment can be obtained. In other words, when the photographic paper 1 is transported over the group of projections 17, as in the case of the above-described embodiment, a reverse transport action along the spiral projections occurs alternately with respect to the transport direction, and a long sheet is formed. It effectively absorbs slack in the middle of transport of photographic paper.

Therefore, even if the photographic paper 1 is pulled and conveyed, the photographic paper 1 can be conveyed at a constant speed without generating excessive tension, so that it is necessary to use a roller having a larger diameter toward the rear end. No need to use a one-way clutch.

When the projections are spirally arranged on the roller surface as described above, it is not always necessary to orient each projection in one direction. That is, as long as the projections are arranged in one direction as a whole, the same effects as in the above embodiment can be exerted merely by being present on the roller outer peripheral surface as the projections.

(2) The projections formed on the transport roller may be directly implanted on the base of the transport roller. In this case, the projections can be formed by being fixed with an adhesive or the like.

(3) The protrusion 17 formed on the transport roller is not limited to the above-mentioned pile-shaped resin, but may be another resin as long as the protrusion-shaped one is formed.

(4) The photosensitive material may be a photographed film other than photographic paper, and the present invention can be applied to a processing apparatus for developing this film.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic overall sectional view of a photographic processing apparatus of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an enlarged cross-sectional view of a transport roller according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an enlarged front view of a transport roller according to another embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 2,3 Developing tank 5 Fixing tank 6,7,8 Rinse tank 17 Projection 19 Base

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A transport roller having a large number of protrusions arranged on an outer peripheral surface in one direction. 2. The transport roller according to claim 1, wherein the projections are made of a soft cloth material having chemical resistance, and the cloth material is coated on a roller base. 3. The conveyance roller according to claim 1, wherein a plurality of the conveyance rollers are arranged in parallel in a conveyance direction of the photosensitive material such that protrusions formed on the conveyance roller are arranged in opposite directions. A photosensitive material transport device in which a roller constitutes a pair of nipping and transporting rollers for transporting a photosensitive material between the roller and a roller having no projection, and a guide roller for guiding the photosensitive material. 4. A rack which is suspended from a photographic processing tank and which can be inserted into the tank, wherein the rack is provided with the pair of rollers for nipping and conveying the photosensitive material and the guide roller. 3. A photosensitive material transport device. 5. A photographic processing apparatus having a developing tank, a fixing tank, and a washing tank provided with the photosensitive material conveying device according to claim 3.